Friday, January 17, 2014

Keep Moving Forward

It’s only
January but I can’t help but think that May is slowly creeping up on me, the
greatest thing in the world happened to me in May of 2009 and that’s when I
married my best friend and the love of my life, but unfortunately May is also a
reminder that it’s another year gone by and we are still struggling to have our
first baby together. It seems insane to me that it’s been 5 years……I never in
my life thought that I would have problems getting pregnant let alone having to
sacrifice an ovary, both fallopian tubes and my sigmoid colon for even just a
shot at having a baby and now we are finding out that I will have to sacrifice
having a child that is genetically mine as well.

Last year after our 4th IVF
cycle my doctor suggested that we look into using an egg donor because she felt
my eggs were not of quality, she said she was willing to do another IVF cycle using
my eggs but felt it would be best to use a donor. I needless to say broke down
in her office….this was unfathomable to me; I am (at the time) only 27 years
old how can this be happening. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around what she was
saying to us, all I kept think was I will never get to look at my child and
think “he/she gets that from me” or that Josh loves my eyes and has always said
that he hopes our baby has them, it’s all gone...... I will never experience that and I was absolutely
devastated! I have become very closed off the past year because of all of this,
I stopped talking to a lot of friends and have even closed off to some of my
family. My doctor explained that I had to grieve the loss of my genetics. I
went through every stage of grief because it literally felt like someone had died,
I can’t even describe the pain I felt and still feel.

I asked Dr.
W to run labs to make sure that I didn’t have any blood clotting issues and as
you know it came back that I in fact had problems. This discovery changed
everything for me; I sucked up my tears and thought “I am going to prove Dr. W
wrong” (clearly the denial stage of grief). I talked Josh into letting me do
ONE more IVF cycle using my eggs, after all Dr. W said there is a cocktail of
vitamins that could help improve egg quality so why not.I took those pills every damn day, some of
them I had to take 7 pills a day. I did acupuncture and lost more weight, I did
EVERYTHING I could possibly do to make this cycle work. We had 30 eggs and only
had 2 embryos to transfer with none to freeze, and neither of them implanted. I,
still in denial thought “well let’s get a second opinion,” hoping that when I
told this new doctor about the terrible cramping I get in my uterus after my
IVF cycle he would say “well that is an easy fix, let’s freeze your embryos,
let your body heal and then transfer them.” Needless to say that isn’t how it
went. He said he is concerned at the fact that we get so many eggs but only end
up with 2 embryos and none to freeze, that is not good and something has to be
happening after fertilization that is causing them to not grow. He said with my
age I should be a great candidate for IVF and should have gotten pregnant by
now, something is happening more than likely chromosome wise. They can run test
on Josh and I to see if we have any chromosome abnormalities, but the only way
to really find out is to do an IVF cycle and do genetic testing on each embryo
to look at what is going wrong and then transfer the embryos that don’t have
any genetic abnormalities but there is a fair chance that all of them have
genetic problems and will not make it past implantation once in my uterus. He pointed
out that by the time we paid for everything we would have spent the same amount of
money that we would have spent to use an egg donor. He strongly suggests that
we use an egg donor because he just doesn’t see it possible that we could have genetic
children together. He is also concerned because of the cramping I have had
during my IVF cycles, he isn’t sure what it is caused from but wants to do
further tests including and endometrial biopsy to make sure I can carry a baby.
I am hoping that everything comes back normal so I can at least carry my baby.

So it looks like Josh and I will be
looking into using an egg donor, I hope we can find someone with my eye color
and dimples. This isn’t cheap either, probably twice the cost of and IVF cycle.
Before anyone decides to email me offering their eggs, I want to say I
appreciate the offer but Josh and I would prefer to use an anonymous donor. I am still having a very hard time with all of this and I am still grieving but I know that all I need is time and support from family and friends.

Thank you
all for your love and support.

SIDE NOTE: I
know that many of you are not going to agree with or understand our decision to use donor
eggs oppose to adopting, but the fact of the matter is that it is OUR decision
what our next step will be during this journey. Everyone is entitled to their
opinion but I will NOT tolerate negativity or hatred toward my husband or I because of our
decision. Remember that we didn’t choose to have infertility it’s a disease and
our options of having a family are getting smaller and smaller and if you haven’t
been through this then you have NO idea how we feel or how hard all of this all is for us.
We only want and need love and positivity.

2 comments:

I think of your family often and cannot wait for the day when you're happy and your family is complete. Thank you for keeping us updated and sharing the stages of what you're going through, I'm sure there are several woman/families out there that this helps. Hugs to both of you!

We have not met, but I am Ken Follette's sister and I just wanted to say that my husband and I wish you the best of luck, and thank you for your bravery and honesty. We have been trying to get pregnant for 2.5 years and plan to begin IVF in the next month or so. My heart and prayers go out to you and Josh. Best of luck on this leg of your journey!

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About Me

My name is Christina, my husband Josh and I have been trying to conceive our first baby since May of 2009. We have been seeing our Reproductive Endocrinologist since December of 2009. I thought it would be a good idea to start blogging our journey and show all the ups and downs and in-betweens of what has to be the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I thought this would be a great therapy tool for me to vent what I am feeling and then thought that it would be great to share my story for other women who are going through similar issues. I know how lonely infertility can be and no matter how many people you come across that have trouble getting pregnant you still feel very much alone. I hope to inspire women to stay strong during their journey.